Skip to main content

M6 Toll road ‘could open for free’ to ease congestion

The UK’s underused M6 toll road could be opened free to drivers stuck in congested traffic on the M6, it has been revealed. Toll road operators Midland Expressway have reportedly offered to clear the path to help relieve traffic jams on the M6 if the Government releases it from its commitment to part-finance the M54 link road. The company, a subsidiary of Australian company Macquarie Atlas Roads, has debts of £1.03 billion, which mature in 2015, and as part of its 50-year concession agreement would have to
June 27, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The UK’s underused 803 M6 Toll road could be opened free to drivers stuck in congested traffic on the M6, it has been revealed.

Toll road operators Midland Expressway have reportedly offered to clear the path to help relieve traffic jams on the M6 if the Government releases it from its commitment to part-finance the M54 link road.

The company, a subsidiary of Australian company 802 Macquarie Atlas Roads, has debts of £1.03 billion, which mature in 2015, and as part of its 50-year concession agreement would have to pay more than £100 million towards the costs of the M54 link road if the Government decides to proceed with it.

Midland Expressway has asked for funding to be scrapped in return for allowing cars and lorries stuck in tailbacks on the M6 to re-route to the 27-mile toll motorway.

Traffic numbers have fallen from a peak of 55,000 a day in 2006, to a daily average of 34,310 in January to March this year.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • US ITS sector needs strategic leadership
    January 31, 2012
    The US is losing its advantage in the ITS sector because of a lack of strategic leadership, according to a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Here, Stephen Ezell, one of the report's authors, talks to ITS International about what can be done to remedy the situation. A new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), Explaining International IT Leadership: Intelligent Transportation Systems, makes for sobering reading within the US ITS community.
  • Slow moving US road user charging programme
    July 18, 2012
    Bern Grush recently attended the Mileage-Based User Fee Conference in Austin Texas where the fledgling American landscape for Road User Charging is beginning to take shape. When I was a kid I liked to poke sticks into the ants' nests in sidewalk cracks. Ants would scatter in every conceivable direction. They ran in circles, they ran over and through each other. They screamed without logic. I was fascinated.
  • Transport Systems Catapult boss: ‘We can’t build our way out of congestion’
    March 4, 2019
    The UK Transport Systems Catapult’s CEO Paul Campion talks to Colin Sowman about helping companies develop tomorrow’s solutions – and explains why you can never build your way to empty roads The future of mobility is going to be driven by services.” That’s the opening position of Paul Campion, CEO of the Transport Systems Catapult (TSC) – the UK government organisation set up to help boost transport-related employment and the economy. Campion was previously with IBM and describes himself as a ‘techno o
  • How to outsmart the rat runners - use data
    June 12, 2023
    Proactively solving transport problems with powerful empirical evidence is appealing: Emily Bobis of Compass IoT explains how vehicle-generated data can be the missing link